Japanese bar offers liquor made from lettuce

If you haven’t heard of it, shochu is a traditional hard liquor in Japan, which is distilled rather than fermented like sake. It’s usually made from rice, barley, sweet potatoes, buckwheat or sugar cane. The alcohol content generally falls between 25-35 percent, so it packs a pretty hefty punch, especially since it’s mostly drunk neat, on the rocks, or just mixed with a little water.

Unfortunately, shochu has a bit of an image problem. In Japan, particularly among the younger generation, it’s often seen as the fusty purview of old men. Overseas, it’s not really known at all. The new all-you-can-drink shochu bar Havespi is seeking to change that by giving their customers a fun venue to freely try out a broad variety of shochus and to enjoy them in creative new ways.

One of the experimental flavors on offer is lettuce shochu, and the team at RocketNews24 gave it a try:

“We opted to start with the lettuce shochu to begin with, drinking it over ice as the staff recommended. Despite the high alcohol content, the taste was surprisingly smooth. Much like lettuce itself, the flavor was faint, refreshing and somehow cooling. One of the great points about shochu, we are told, is that it can be made from so many different bases, so there is a broad range of possible flavors.”

Source http://en.rocketnews24.com/